House and Senate prepare for budget agreement

Updated 11:16 pm, Friday, April 5, 2013

AUSTIN — With Texas Senate and House spending proposals approved by each chamber, a small group of lawmakers is preparing for weeks of meetings to hammer out compromises on some of the most pressing — and politically charged — issues facing the Legislature.

It's budget conference committee time, folks.

This session, Texas lawmakers will use the process to figure out exactly how much to inject back into public schools after lawmakers gutted funding in 2011 to the tune of $5.4 billion. And the thorny issue of what Texas should do about Medicaid expansion will also get aired during the conference committee.

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Budget conferees also will settle differences between the two spending plans on issues like health care for prisoners, how much to spend fighting wildfires and how to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed raises to state employees.

But even before conferees are appointed in a process expected to happen early next week, lawmakers are girding to make way for the biggest elephant in the room: funding for schools.

The House on Thursday approved a budget proposal for 2014-2015 that includes an additional $2.7 billion for schools.

The Senate, on the other hand, passed a budget in March that included $1 billion less for schools than the House proposal.

That leaves budget conferees on a potential collision course to reconcile the roughly $1 billion difference in what has become one of the most heated issues of the session.

“The House has made its position known and it would be wildly unpopular for the Senate to dig into a proposal that's going to fund education with less dollars than the House,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat who was among the handful who voted against the House budget because it left $600 million unused. “Many of us veterans recognize that while that money is on the sidelines, somebody is going to try and use it.”

As if funding for public schools isn't complicated enough, the conference committee also will have to work out differences in how the two spending plans treat higher education.

The Senate's budget proposal funds public universities at $16.8 billion over the next two years, while the House plan comes in a full $600 million leaner.

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By the numbers

House and Senate budgets

Overall spending

Senate: $195.5 billion

House: $193.8 billion

Border security

Senate: 93.8 million

House: 92.3 million

Transportation:

Senate: 17.1 billion

House: 17.3 billion

Higher Education:

Senate: 16.8 billion

House: 16.2 billion

Financial Aid:

Senate: $1.08 billion

House: $1.28 billion

Funding to fight wild fires:

Senate: $87.5 million

House: $70.3 million

Funding for schools, however, is far from the only controversial issue the conferees will dive into.

“If education is the No. 1 priority, then Medicaid is No. 11/2,” Martinez Fischer said of the conference committee's agenda.

Texas lawmakers have been wrestling over whether the state should accept federal dollars made available through the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid.

Turner said most of the hesitation from lawmakers on moving forward with some sort of Medicaid compromise stems from a “fear of getting tagged with the title of expansion of Medicaid.”

“We'll have to wrestle with that,” he said. “Can we do it without being tagged? I don't know.”

Last session, when the Legislature was facing a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, the recipe for lawmakers was simple: cut, cut, cut.

This time around, an economic rebound is allowing lawmakers to decide where to restore funding.

But even with more cash in the coffers, lawmakers say they're still playing a game of catch-up because the state's needs have grown over the past two years.

And then there's the issue of how to give state employees a raise.

Under a Senate plan with a $302 million price tag, some state employees would get a 3 percent, across-the-board raise. The House version opts for a merit-based approach for some state employees with increases equal to 1 percent of total salaries.